Locus
by psquare
Summary: Tag to 9.03. There are five little outcasts in a hole in the middle of America... (although Sam's pretty sure there's a sixth.)


Tag to SPN 9.03! What can I say, this season is _brill_. It's like the glory days of s6 all over again.

... So yeah. Remember that story I wrote where Ezekiel had the best of intentions and Sam still got screwed in the deal? This is not that story.

**Summary:** There are five little outcasts in a hole in the middle of America... (although Sam's pretty sure there's a sixth.)

**Warnings:** SPOILERS for s9 upto 9.03: _I'm No Angel_. Swearing, gore, some violence, angst, serious mind-fuckery, weirdness, metaphor-abuse, present-tense.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Supernatural _or any of its characters.

**_Locus_**

_Everywhere I look… I see friends and family_.

* * *

In a long-forgotten hole in the middle of America, surrounded by the vestiges of a failed legacy, there is a demon, a former angel, a Prophet, Sam, and Dean.

* * *

"This is _insane_," Dean's saying, voice low and rough, looking thoroughly miserable. "We'd just _found_ him."

Sam blinks. His vision's blurry, and everything he sees is chased by halos, as if he's just spent too long staring into the sun. "What are you _talking_ about?"

Dean looks up, startled. "Cas," he says. "He… he whammied us, and… left."

Sam drops into a seat, feeling exhausted to his bones. "He's human, Dean. How the hell is he going to 'whammy' us? And for that matter, _when_? Last I saw, all he was doing was eating that burrito—"

"I don't know!" Dean throws his hands up and turns away. "You know how he is—_nuts_. Been missing more than a few screws ever since _you_ and that stupid nuthouse and Purgatory, and now that he's _human_—" He trails off.

"That's _bull_, and you know it," Sam says. "Look, he can't have gotten very far. If we leave now, we can catch up with him." He grabs his jacket and is already halfway to the entrance when he realises that Dean's not following. He turns, bewildered.

"You weren't awake for the worst of it, man," Dean says, and his eyes are looking at anywhere but Sam, but his voice is shaking. "He won't come back. He _can't_."

A sudden coldness seeps into Sam. "Haven't been awake for a lot of things lately," he says, and he recognises the cold as despair as he watches Dean's anguish turn into alarm. "Why didn't I die back at the church, Dean?"

"Sammy," Dean starts, and the blood rushing in Sam's ears drowns out everything else that Dean says (_is going to say_) because he _remembers_ this: six and two hundred years ago, in a cold cemetery in Wisconsin, with Dean leaking blood and desperation (and fierce, fierce love)—

—there's a shadow scuttling over the wall behind Dean's shoulder. Sam blinks, and it morphs: becomes a living thing, burrowing into Dean's ear and peeking out through his nostrils, spattering blood and bits of brain. He blinks again, and it disappears.

Dean only stares.

"Well," Sam says. "I know you're worried about Cas, but give him some time to get here. He called you what, a week ago? It's a big country, Dean." He sighs loudly and stretches. "I'm gonna go check on Kevin. The kid's barely come out of his room at all."

Dean still doesn't say anything; only continues to stare before giving a small, jerky nod.

Just as Sam turns to leave however, he swears he hears Dean mutter, "I didn't give you permission for _that_."

He can't quite explain the shudder that runs through him at that.

* * *

The former angel leaves one prison to seek out another purpose to be chained to; he wants no part of freedom and its terrors.

The demon, the Prophet, Sam, and Dean remain.

* * *

Sam sees Hell the day Kevin disappears.

There's a moment when he's turning to pull a book off the shelf, then the next, he's on an endless grassy plain, the sky aflame with light from two red suns. His bare feet dig into the soft grass as he raises his sword high, his whole being thrumming with boundless energy. He slices through nameless, formless creatures, oil-slick black and tainted, and all he wants, _all he knows_—

(_is all of Heaven raises the sword with him, and when he swings down, it isn't blood that pours, flows, soaks into the ground like rivers that will one day carve a canyon, but surety, and justice, and—_)

"Sammy? _Sam_!"

Sam wakes up on the floor, shivering. Dean's already pulling at his arm, trying to make him sit up, although his stomach is roiling and he feels like he's one false movement away from puking all over his brother's shoes. His hands are shaking uncontrollably, and he wedges them between his knees trying to (_recapture that moment of supreme triumph, when he stood on a broken battlefield and declared himself the master of death_) gain some semblance of control.

"I'm—I'm okay," Sam starts, but Dean's still agitated; he's got one hand squeezing Sam's shoulder (harder and harder and it _hurts_ like his bones are being ground together), while looking around frantically. "Did you see Kevin?" he asks. "Can't find him anywhere."

"I—uh, um." Sam clears his throat. "We were reading together last night; he—uh, went to bed early, and I haven't seen him since." He gathers his limbs together, and wills himself to stand up. Dean's grip impossibly _tightens_ as he sways and leans heavily against the bookcase. "Why, is he—I mean, have you tried looking in the—"

"He's not in the bunker, Sam," Dean tells him flatly. "And if your next question is about Crowley, don't bother—I've already been there. 'Bout as useful as he usually is."

"Have you tried calling him?"

"Eight times. Goes to voicemail every time." Dean finally (_finally_) lets go of Sam's shoulder. "_Dammit_!" He swings in a violent arc, scattering the books that Sam had so meticulously organised on the table to the floor. Sam imagines a red haze following that movement, shimmering in the air for a long time after Dean's paced to the other side of the room. The smell of sulphur fills Sam's nostrils.

Sam brings himself back to the moment with considerable effort. "I'll give it a shot," he says, pulling out his phone. His eyes widen as he activates the screen. "Hey," he says. "Kevin's left me a voice message."

Dean's by his side in an instant. He plays the message on speaker: "_Hey, Sam. I know we talked about—a lot last night, so I'm not going to waste time here. I, uh, I'm sorry. Again. I have the angel tablet with me; I'll be working on translating the rest of it. I'll send over photocopies—we can compare notes. I'll be—safe, Sam. Don't worry, and don't come looking for me._" There's a pause, some scuffling sounds. "_Tell Dean I'm sorry, too_."

A long moment of silence follows, during which half-formed explanations and heated cries of denial are already crowding the space between them, so much so that Sam thinks he sees the words suspended in mid-air, writhing like snakes, reaching—

Dean finally turns to him. "What. The hell did you _say_ to him?!"

"Nothing!" When Dean continues to glare at him, Sam continues, "Look—we were both in the library yesterday, okay? He was working on the tablet, I was organising the archives, we barely exchanged five words with each other, and then—" Sam paused, frowning. "I went to, uh, bed early. I think. I mean, I woke up in my bed this morning without having even put half of the stuff here _away_, so I don't know _when_ Kevin thinks I had this life-changing conversation with him, but—"

"Fine, Sam. Fine!" Dean puts his hands up, shakes his head. A chunk of his scalp falls off at the movement, exposing bloody, yellowed bone. "But I am having a talk with _you_ later."

Sam tears his attention away from the insects trying to burrow their way into Dean's skull. "I've already _told_ you everything I know!"

"Yeah, well," Dean turns away, starts pulling out his phone. "Just keep that in mind." He walks away, furiously dialling.

Sam sinks into a chair, buries his face in his hands, and tries to ignore the quiet, familiar chuckle from right behind his shoulder.

* * *

The Prophet has lived through too many of his own prophecies to risk ignoring a warning. He leaves in the night, and is several hundred miles away before the brothers are even aware of his absence.

The demon, Sam, and Dean remain.

* * *

The empty shackles are still swaying.

Dean's still gaping (at the shackles, the burnt sigils, the destroyed warding, _the corpses piled at the back, twisted and disfigured and each of them wearing their faces, twisted in a rictus of agony_) while Sam stumbles back until he hits the wall, and slides to the floor.

"I don't—how did the—son of a _bitch_!" Dean slams his hand on the table, breathing hard. "We need to—we need to go _now_. Get your stuff together, Sammy; we need to find the bastard before—"

"I can't."

Dean finally turns around, sees Sam with his knees pulled up to his chest, forehead grinding into his kneecaps. "What?"

"I _can't_," Sam repeats, and now he knows he sound plaintive, but the world's dipping and swaying and the walls are dripping with blood, and he can't really bring himself to care. "I'm _slipping_ again, Dean. I'm losing time, and—I'm _seeing_—" One of the corpses blinks, turns its (_Dean's_) head towards him, and his voice breaks.

"You're hallucinating again." Dean's voice is curiously flat, and Sam forces himself to look at his brother, who's standing stiff-shouldered and wary. "Like the Lucifer-in-my-head kind?"

Sam's eyes are suddenly burning—with tears, with shame. "I thought I had it under control," he says quietly. "But after the trials… he's _back_, Dean." His voice drops impossibly lower, and Dean crouches in front of him, leans forward to listen. "I can _feel_ it, inside me… it's so goddamn familiar, y'know? And half of the time, I don't know where I am, what I'm seeing—" **_what_**_ I am_—

There are cold fingers on the back of his neck, and Sam starts, but it's Dean pulling him in against his chest, the other hand threading through his hair. "You beat him once, Sammy," Dean says. "And you can do it again."

Hearing the words from Dean feels both crushing and liberating, and Sam's not quite sure how to react, so he presses his forehead against Dean's neck and tries to blink back tears.

"We'll get through this, you hear me? It's just Lucifer messin' with your head—you _know_ this."

"I do." Sam swallows. "I'm sorry, Dean."

"Yeah," Dean breathes, and now there's blood soaking into Sam's hair and dripping into his eyes, but Sam doesn't look and Dean doesn't let go.

* * *

The demon leaves his prison, his safe haven. He is promptly hunted and killed by the queen of the creatures he once ruled, and his head is paraded in hell, to the sounds of laughter and death.

Dean remains.

**_Finis_**


End file.
